TransPHorm: Translation of Public Health Information for a Diverse Public

NWCPHP researchers are studying how to use machine translation technology to produce efficient and accurate public health material for limited English speakers as part of the TransPHorm project.

Researchers at TransPHorm are investigating the use of machine translation technology to shorten the time and costs of translating public health materials. The end goal of this research is to improve access to health information within limited English proficiency (LEP) populations.

For people with limited English proficiency—more than 46 million people in the US—accurate, easy-to-understand health information is hard to access. It has been difficult for health departments to meet growing demands for multi-lingual health materials, due in part to the time and resources it takes to create high-quality translations.

Machine translation, or the translation of text into another language by a fully automatic computer program, holds promise for producing translations efficiently and accurately. However, to date, the quality of automated translations for public health materials has been poor.

TransPHorm project researchers have been working with bilingual health professionals at the Washington State Department of Health, University of Washington, Public Health - Seattle & King County, and local health departments to advance the understanding of current translation processes, and to examine how novel machine translation technologies can be incorporated into public health practice.

Specifically, researchers:

Use qualitative methods to understand current manual translation workflow and the time and costs involved with creating quality translations

Apply cognitive work analysis to describe the strengths and weaknesses of translation activities in public health

Investigate novel technologies for improving development and access to multilingual health information for limited English proficiency groups.

Systematically compare machine translation with manual translations in terms of quality, turnaround time and costs